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Voting Procedure on Tenure Cases

TO: A&S Chairs and Directors

FROM: Todd T. Gleeson

SUBJECT: Voting procedure on tenure cases

DATE: 19 February 2003

In 1999 the VCAC communicated to colleges and schools a strong recommendation that all units adopt a similar style of voting on personnel cases involving tenure and promotion to associate professor. In essence, the VCAC was asking for primary units to vote in a way that provides to higher level review committees a context for the overall primary unit vote, and to stimulate a substantive discussion at the department level about the relative case for excellence in teaching and/or research. This strong recommendation was communicated to units in our college orally as far as I can tell and most units, but not all units, have since modified their bylaws or procedure documents and have been voting in this way for a number of years. The ASC Personnel Committee has adopted this style of voting, and has come to expect this style of voting in units making recommendations to it.

An example of how a recorded vote in a tenure and promotion to associate professor case is as follows:

Hellems Financial Services Center Staff

Excellent

Meritorious

Less than Meritorious

Teaching

2

12

1

Research/Creative Work

9

6

0

Service

1

14

0

Vote on Tenure/Promotion: 11 Yes, 4 No

This voting procedure does not apply to comprehensive review cases, where the question is whether or not the candidate is making normal progress. Neither does it apply to cases of promotion to full professor, where the essence of the question before the faculty is whether the candidate has shown “continued growth, development, and accomplishment since promotion and tenure”, and whether “the record taken as a whole, is judged to be excellent.”

If your unit is one of the few that has not yet made this change to your voting procedures, I ask that you do so formally and in time to implement this voting procedure for tenure and promotion cases that will come before you in AY 03-04 and after.